The postponed and long-awaited 2020 Tour de France is finally heading towards Paris, which is a good opportunity to ogle some high-tech bikes and colourful kit — and it’s difficult trying to avoid eye contact with Team Bahrain Mclaren Merida’s Scultura.
While we’d much rather imagine a future that contained a return to the Golden Era of Cycle racing — at the very least the bikes it was raced upon — one can’t help but be dazzled by the two-wheeled results of a multi-million dollar R&D budget.
This is just one of the models that Merida have supplied to the Team Bahrain Mclaren team for the 2020 season, the others being the aero Reacto bike for the sprinters and the Time Warp trial bike.
The climbing contingent for the 2020 Tour de France includes lithe luminaries like the Wout Poels and Spain’s Mikel Landa who, as of the second rest day, ranks seventh in the quest for the coveted yellow jersey.
The colors of the team bikes and kit are not coincidental, as any keen auto racing fan can tell you. That papaya hue has been Mclaren’s racing color in one combination or another since 1968 when it first appeared on the works cars.
While the sight of the peloton as a whole is an utter visual bombardment, there are a few teams whose kit and liveries are pretty easy on the eye, and Bahrain Mclaren is one. That’s a credit to their partners Le Col, who designed and produced the exceptional kit.
Rudy Project supplied helmets that look just as fast as the bikes, which are spec’d with Shimano’s Di2 group with hydraulic disc brakes, along with handbuilt Vision Metron rims and Continental rubber. Vision’s one-piece Metron 6D cockpit is upfront.
The next week is the Tour’s final and, with more than a few high mountain passes between the peloton and Paris, we will see how the Scultura — and the Bahrain Mclaren team — holds up. Massif thanks to Matt Ben Stone for the excellent photography.
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Team Bahrain Mclaren | Facebook | Instagram
